---
title: 'Member of Technical Staff, Virology at LatchBio'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-virology-latchbio-san-francisco-024n38fr9e7n'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-08'
---

# Member of Technical Staff, Virology at LatchBio

- **Company:** LatchBio
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-07-29
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-08
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/latchbio/c7dcb5f9-0c74-4d06-bb49-4f1d41a4cc09

## Job description

Member of Technical Staff - Virology

As molecular data generation and frontier model intelligence grows, new approaches to data analysis are needed across the biotech industry. Latch is building intelligent, high performance agents for biological data analysis, empowering over 5,000 scientists across 150+ R&D labs to handle data from instrument-to-insights.

We're seeking a Member of Technical Staff for Virology to lead our safety benchmarking efforts in the Biosecurity group, ensuring frontier artificial intelligence is deployed responsibly in biology.

## About the Role

You will design our technical approach to understand how agents could be misused for biological harm, and measure where current safety guardrails fall short.

You will work with research engineers and biologists to build benchmarks that measure whether AI systems can meaningfully assist with:

- Designing and assessing virology experiments
- Troubleshooting protocols and identifying where an AI-generated recommendation would fail in the wet lab
- Interpreting viral genomes, proteins, mutations, and phenotypic data
- Selecting, using, and evaluating bioinformatics and biological design tools
- Planning iterative experimental workflows
- Evaluating experimental feasibility across conditions
- Identifying when AI systems provide inaccurate, unsafe, or incomplete guidance in dual-use contexts

## Requirements

- PhD in virology or a closely related field, with doctoral or postdoctoral research centered on viruses
- Substantial hands-on wet-lab virology experience, including experimental design, execution, and troubleshooting
- Experience working in BSL-3 or high-containment BSL-2 laboratories
- Have used used or evaluated Large Language Models, biological foundation models, or AI-enabled biological design tools
- Proficiency in Python and/or R

Culture @ Latch

How we work. Genuinely flexible schedules - we just ask that you communicate when you're coming in later than usual. We care most about hard work and output. We're respectfully opinionated, it will always be us against problems, not each other. Optimize for each other's time and bring solutions, not just problems. You'll join a bench suited to your expertise, but we value cross-domain learning and interoperability across teams.

The office & perks. Waterfront office near Oracle Park, 2x free daily meals, unlimited snacks, company outings most months, and team offsites. Plus a vibrant community: cycling, soccer, figure skating, boxing, run clubs, reading clubs, martial arts, music, game nights.

## Compensation & Logistics

- $180k+ base, increasing with technical depth and experience
- Variable compensation + equity + stock options
- 100% premium covered Blue Shield platinum health plan ($0 deductible / $0 out-of-pocket)
- Free meals (lunch and dinner)
- Waterfront office in China Basin, San Francisco
- Full-time, in-person

## About LatchBio

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: LatchBio builds and deploys frontier AI agents for biological data analysis, serving over 300 biopharma and R&D labs worldwide.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A; total funding $33.2M)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2021
- **Founders**: Alfredo Andere (CEO) and Kenny Workman (CTO)

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Biotechnology Research / AI for biology
- Target customers: B2B – biopharma companies, academic R&D labs, and solution providers (kits, assays, instrument vendors)
- Mission: Deploy AI agents into real scientific work to accelerate data analysis and drug discovery

## Products & Services
- **Latch Platform**: A unified, serverless bioinformatics platform that lets scientists run, track, and debug pipelines via an SDK-generated no-code interface. Supports FastQ, CSV, H5AD, TIFF, and other formats. Agents can analyze messy real-world data.
- **Latch SDK**: Python toolchain to define serverless workflows and dynamically generate no-code UIs, removing cloud-infrastructure overhead.
- **agent.bio**: Public, interactive sandbox where frontier AI agents (e.g., Claude 4.8 Opus) analyze biological data. Supports 40+ solution providers.
- **benchmarks.bio**: Open, reproducible benchmarks measuring AI agent performance on spatial, single-cell, epigenomics, and preclinical pharmacology data. Includes papers like scBench-Long, TxBench-PP, etc.
- **White-labeled data analysis**: Solution providers can offer a branded, simpler analysis experience for their kits and services.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Annual revenue of ~$1.0M (LinkedIn estimate); total funding $33.2M
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Coatue, Lux Capital, Fifty Years, Haystack, Gelt, Backend Capital; individual investors include George Church, Jeff Dean, Hemant Taneja, Laura Deming, Alec Nielsen
- **Growth Signals**: 140% YoY headcount growth (from ~11 to 26 employees); 300+ biopharma and academic teams served; 40+ solution providers onboarded; recent publication of multiple benchmark papers (2025–2026)

## Competitive Advantages
- **First-mover in AI agents for biology**: Combines frontier LLMs with rigorous, verifiable benchmarks tailored to biological data (spatial, single-cell, epigenomics, pharmacology).
- **Open benchmarks & reproducibility**: All benchmarks (e.g., scBench-Long) are published openly, building trust and attracting top talent.
- **White-labeling for solution providers**: Allows kit and instrument vendors to offer AI-powered data analysis under their own brand, creating a network effect.
- **Tight integration with real lab workflows**: Supports common file formats and interfaces with existing pipelines, reducing friction for scientists.

## Strategic Focus
- Continue research and deployment of AI agents for biology, with emphasis on long-horizon tasks and messy real-world data.
- Expand the agent.bio sandbox to more solution providers and biopharma customers.
- Publish additional benchmarks (spatial, preclinical) to establish Latch as the standard evaluator of AI in biology.
- Grow engineering and bioinformatics teams to accelerate platform development.

## Why Work Here
- **Engineering culture**: Small, high-autonomy team where engineers own features end-to-end and see their code impact thousands of scientists the same day. Reading groups on category theory, immunology, and more.
- **Remote/hybrid policy**: Not explicitly stated, but headquarters in San Francisco; office parking subsidized. Likely in-office with flexibility.
- **Notable perks**: Unlimited PTO, 100%-subsidized platinum health plan (Cigna) + 75% for dependents, dental/vision, 401(k), ambitious equity, 12+ meals weekly, annual tech stipend, signing bonus, O-1 visa sponsorship, professional development.
- **Team size**: ~26 employees, with 65% in technical roles (engineering, bioinformatics, research). Flat structure with direct access to founders.
- **Growth trajectory**: Rapid headcount growth and expanding customer base offer career acceleration opportunities.

## Sources
1. [latch.bio](https://latch.bio/)
2. [latch.bio/about](https://latch.bio/about)
3. [linkedin.com/company/latchbio](https://www.linkedin.com/company/latchbio)
4. [cbinsights.com/company/latch-bio](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/latch-bio)
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/latchbio](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/latchbio)

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